


Salvage

by FlipSpring



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Cultural Unease, Gen, Minask’s Actual Ghost, Raughd Mention - Freeform, Sex Mention (But No Sex), Slice Of Life When Life Is A Little Bit Emotionally Fraught, Sphene Is Rude, Uran Has A Band, physical injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26961364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlipSpring/pseuds/FlipSpring
Summary: Finding uncommon ground.
Relationships: Gem of Sphene & Queter (Imperial Radch)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 19





	Salvage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gostaks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gostaks/gifts).



> this was sposed 2 b like a short ~2k fic trick-or-treat exchange but it got away from me  
> i got way 2 into it and perhaps churned out something more serious than the spirit of the Game  
> sorry! oh well.  
> 

**First** **Impressions:**

The shopkeeper set down a tray of tea and pastries, the dishes jostling slightly as they settled. A thumbcake nearly toppled from its pile, only to right itself. The dishes were clay pottery, glazed blue around the rim, substances pulled from the earth and moulded into shape.  


_Gem of Sphene_ ’s ancillary sat across from me, wordlessly wearing a face stolen from an Athoekan captive.   


I picked up a teabowl. It was Radkhaai style tea, over-roasted and steeped too hot, but my gloves insulated the heat. I took a smooth sip. The tea was too hot. Drinking out of earthenware on an unspecial occasion was, of course, in poor taste, and nobody would have thought to do it back home. But I’d never been very superstitious, and preferred to abide laws by letter, rather than spirit. I could argue that this occasion was a special one. I could defend my arguments.  


_Gem of Sphene_ mirrored me, picking up a teacup and sipping, its eyes never wavering from mine, never blinking.   


“I suppose this tea is suitable enough to its task,” said _Gem of Sphene_ , affectlessly.  


Trust a Radkhaai warship with Radkhaai tastes to enjoy its Radkhaai tea.  


“What does the Esteemed Fleet Captain Breq Mianaai want from me?” I asked. I was fully aware of my shitty accent. Hopefully I was able to express just how little I gave a crap.  


The warship made a gesture I didn’t know, still staring unblinkingly at me, its earthenware cup half-raised. “Beats me what she thinks I could possibly want to do with an uncivilized brat like you. No offense.”  


It took me a moment to find the right words, in Radkhaai. “As if I care what an outdated pile of body-thief garbage thinks of me,” I replied, easily, and took another sip of tea. This time, I grimaced openly. “Ugh. What is this, _burnt_?” I’d learned the word _burnt_ only recently, and was finding it very useful.  


“I wouldn’t know,” said the warship, “They don’t make tea like they used to. It all tastes like shitty leaf-water to me.”  


I snorted.  


We spent the rest of the time in the teashop in silence. I ate most of the pastries, and left it all on Fleet Captain’s tab.  


“Well, goodbye,” I said. And then added, as I picked up my jacket and pulled the sleeves over my arms, “Can’t say it was a pleasure.”  


“Likewise,” said _Gem of Sphene_ , blandly.  


~  


** Twelve Months Later: **

I was working on _Gem of Sphene’s_ stern railgun. Or what was left of it. The entire ship was ancient. It was _so_ ancient that its age was described to me as “some four thousand years old,” as if they couldn’t even be bothered to specify the closest century. Thus, I couldn’t know if this ship was born before or after the Fifth (and Last) Great Exodus. The Radkhaai didn’t care to pin down where their events overlapped those of uncivilized histories.  


So the only context I had for the date of _Sphene_ ’s creation was in terms of their Radkhaai history. Namely, that _Sphene_ was born before the rise of Anaander Mianaai. That _Sphene_ had fought Anaander Mianaai’s rule, in an era before such a thing had not yet been inevitable. _Sphene_ called Mianaai “the Usurper.” This made me wonder, naturally, who or what she had usurped. _Sphene_ never elaborated. Only that Mianaai had “ruined the proper order of things.” Which explained everything and nothing.  


The stern railgun was wider than I was tall, and had once taken up an entire quarter of the length of the warship. I was the only mechanic assigned to repair it. A tall order, if only because _Sphene_ had been cannibalizing its own nonessential parts for some three thousand years. The more experienced engineers were working on the more sensitive parts of the ship: the engines, the gate-maker, the scanning equipment. But a railgun is nothing more than a glorified magnetic rail for accelerating big chunks of metal to stupid speeds. The design has hardly changed since prehistoric times. They could’ve assigned an eleven-year-old to do it.  


I wasn’t bitter, or anything.

The specific part of the railgun I was currently working on was the loading mechanism, which hadn’t so much been mined for useful parts as entirely stripped for raw material. _Sphene's_ ancient pre-Mianaai designs didn’t mesh with current standards, so they couldn’t just replace the thing wholesale without ripping out half the (again, cannibalized) wiring in the walls. I’d finished drawing up the designs four whole weeks ago based on the specs Sphene had given me. And then three other senior engineers had needed to approve my designs, going back and forth about all their _concerns_ and their _suggestions_. None of which improved upon my proposed schematic in any significant way.

So there I was, in the stern, carving up the modern standard pieces and putting them back together into something that would be able to ferry standard-sized chunks of metal through _Sphene_ ’s hull and into its geriatric skeleton of a pea-shooter. An ancillary was assisting me. This one had a Valskaayan face. Familiar features. I didn’t mention it. We’d had the argument several times, by now.  


The ancillary was still. Unusually still. Even for an ancillary.  


“What is it?” I asked.  


The ancillary looked at me, unblinking. After a pause that was slightly too long, it said, “Do your people believe in an afterlife?”  


I made no effort to curtail my expression of dismissive contempt. “No,” I said, “Not a one. Not ever. Do yours?”  


“That depends on who you ask,” said the violent desecration of a dead body, reasonably. And then it said, “Queter, I’d like to ask you a favor.”

I paused. _Sphene_ had never called me by my name before, even in the presence of polite company. It was always _Brat_ or _Hey You_ or _Engineer._ I turned off the visual overlay visor I’d been using to help guide my work (it had been pain in the ass to get one requisitioned — reams of paperwork, religious allowance petitions, a note from the doctor, weeks of standby, a favor called in from the Fleet Captain through Uran’s subtle hinting, and an insane amount of arguing on my part, but it was worth every second just to make my _fucking_ cultural background an _fucking_ inconvenience to the _proper_ order of _civilization_ ).

I asked, “What is going on with you?”

“If you’d turn your visor back on,” said the corpse with a face that might have been my family, once, “And look over there.”

_Sphene_ gestured behind me.

Slowly, I turned my visor back on. I turned my head.

Behind me was darkness. Most of the lights in this area of the ship were burnt out. In the darkness were shadows — stacks of boxes and crates filled with new parts for _Sphene_ , some of them opened, some of their contents lying about where I’d unpacked them: wall-panels, light-panels, spools of wire, tools, markers, rolls of fabric, etc, etc.

In those shadows was a deeper shadow.

I blinked, closing my eyes tightly. Opened them again. The deeper shadow had moved, and now the shadow-darkness was traced with a faint grey light in the shape of a figure. I blinked again, and the figure was closer, standing almost in the light of the light-panel I’d hooked up so that I could do my work. The figure was flickering like static on a half-dead display screen.  


I lifted up my visor, and the figure vanished. Pulled the visor back down and the figure stood within the light, no longer grey, but almost solid. They had that unbinary Radkhaai look to them, their clothes crisp and practical in a military sort of way, but cut unlike any of the Radkhaai military uniforms I’d yet seen, and less embellished too. The figure was tall, heavy-browed, with colored LED earrings glimmering all up the shell of both ears. Their expression was very, very sad.  


“Sphene?” I asked. I’d never called it _Sphene_ , before. Only _Old Crock,_ or _Hey You,_ or _Ship_. “Who is that?”  


The figure looked at me, then at _Sphene_. The figure made a series of slow, deliberate gestures with their hands that I did not know, and I heard _Sphene_ ’s ancillary intake breath, sharply. 

“Captain Minask,” it said.  


I blinked. The figure vanished.  


~

** Private Quarters: **

I had my own cabin, aboard _Sphene_. Granted, it was actually a repurposed supply crate in my work area, because like _fuck_ was I going to sleep in a room with three other complete strangers, all Radkhaai, none of whom had ever heard of the concept of “personal space.” (Cue unpleasant flashbacks to my lodging assignment on Station that I occupied whilst taking my Engineering modules. God embrace me, and may I hit my head and forget the entire experience, except of course for anything that might eventually be useful or fun to know.)  


I’d appointed the interior of the crate with handmade shelves, string-lights, and a bed. A real bed, with padded sides and everything. It was cozy enough, and it _didn’t contain any spyware,_ which made it infinitely superior to any Radkhaai room I’d ever occupied _. Sphene_ had never commented on my homemade cabin, though I sometimes caught the impression that it thought the whole thing was _improper_ and _uncivilized_ , like everything else about me.

That night I returned from the baths to find _Sphene’s_ Valskaayan ancillary standing next to the door of my crate-cabin. I unlocked the door. I’d built both the door and the lock myself. The lock indicated that nobody had opened it since my last visit. Of course, _Sphene_ might have hacked it.

“What is it?” I asked. I picked up the door and put it aside (I should probably build a hinge or hanging mechanism, but hadn’t felt like it), then ducked down just slightly to enter the crate. 

The ancillary stood at the doorway, peered in at me as I turned on the lights and undid the towel around my head.  


It said, “May I enter?”

I served a quizzical look. There wasn’t much space inside my cabin. “Sure. Why?”

_Sphene_ didn’t answer this. It stepped in, and then squatted down on a small patch of floor that was mostly clear of debris. It picked up a hair-stick from underfoot (my second-favorite, smooth wood with a carved bird perched at one end), and held it out to me.

I took it, and set it on one of the shelves, still serving a quizzical look.

_Sphene_ said, unprompted, “The other engineers think you hate them.”

I scowled.

_Sphene_ continued, “They think your opinion of yourself is inflated.”

“Alright, what is this about?” I demanded, “What is going on? Why did you show me that recording earlier, of that Captain Mianaask or whoe—”  


“ _Minask_ ,” _Sphene_ snapped, very clearly riled, “Her name is Captain Minask Nenkur.”

A beat later, it added, “That wasn’t a recording of mine. Either something has gone very wrong with my internal drive, or we’re both seeing a ghost.”

I snorted.

Then I entertained the possibility that _Sphene_ was actually being serious. “Wait, what?”

“You should eat with the others, at a bare minimum,” said _Sphene._ And then it spelled out, patronizingly, “Humans are programmed to bond over shared food.”

I glared at _Sphene’s_ Valskaayan ancillary.

“What?” said _Sphene_ , as if it hadn’t said anything weird, ever, in its life.

“What _is_ going on with you?” I asked, “As in, do you legitimately need somebody to run diagnostics on your brain?”

_Sphene_ stood, abruptly. It said, in a tone that would have been sarcastic if a human had delivered it, “ _You’re_ the engineer.” And then it ducked out of my cabin.

~

** Bonding Over Shared Food: **

I walked into the common dining area at the timeslot on my (oft-ignored) schedule labelled “lunch.” I loaded up my tray with a bowl of skel and a bowl of tea.

The three other engineers were sitting at a shared table. Their conversation died as I approached.

_Fuck you, Sphene_ , I thought, in the privacy of my mind.

I pulled up a chair at the silent table, laid down my tray and bag.

Tiamaat was the first to recover. She was the youngest and closest to my age, and also the most oblivious to the idea of “personal space.” Always saccharine and upbeat, to the point of where I suspected her to be faking it. She reached over to touch a gloved hand to my wrist and said, “Queter! It’s nice to see you out of the holds for once.”

_Ugh_ , I thought, in the privacy of my mind. I successfully resisted the impulse to flinch away from her hand. After all, the purpose of this torture-fest was to rehabilitate their perceptions of me a little. There must have been a reason _Sphene’d_ gone out of the way to alert me, after all. I’d settle from an upgrade from “Queter is an asshole so let’s make her life harder if the opportunity ever arises,” to “Queter doesn’t care all that much about us so let’s not care all that much about her either.”

The other two just sort of stared at me. Vardys and Beliaan exchanged a look.  


I said, “Sorry I haven’t been around. Do you ever get so focused on your tasks you forget the world exists?”  


“Oh, totally!” said Tiamaat.

“Anyway,” I said, “I made _khallas_ the other night, if you’d like to try some.” They’d better. I’d spent money on the materials and time in the making of it that I could’ve used for other, superior purposes.

“K-hallas?” Beliaan asked, looking interested despite herself. I pulled the box of soft breads from my bag, and laid it out in the center of the table.

I lifted the lid to reveal the goods. “It’s a Valskaayan food. It’s supposed to be reserved for celebrations I think, but we make it all the time back home—”

“Wow, that’s so cool!” said Tiamaat. She reached towards the box with a utensil, then hesitated. “Can I?”

“Yeah,” I said, “We eat it with our hands.” I demonstrated, picking up the bread and tearing off a chunk. I offered the loaf to her.

Vardys made a face at this. But Tiamaat promptly dropped her utensil and grabbed the bread in her gloved hand, copying my tearing technique (sloppily), before handing the small loaf over to Beliaan, who followed suit. Vardys stood and retrieved a bread knife from the kitchen shelves to cut the khallas with, primly slicing a piece off and laying it down neatly on her plate.

“This is really good, Queter,” said Tiamaat, “You made this yourself?”

“Yeah,” I said.

I glanced over at an ancillary who was standing by the entrance to the dining area. I discreetly made a Radkhaai gesture that meant, _are you satisfied with this development?_ Its expression remained neutral.

There was bread left over after my attempted bridge-building exercise with my fellow _civilized_ engineers. I wasn’t sure the exercise had been successful, but at least they could no longer say I hadn’t tried. By my estimation, if I showed myself in the common dining area approximately once every thirty-or-so nights, I’d buy myself the most goodwill per unit time.

I brought the leftover loaf back down to my work area, and it kept me company as I worked. It sat next to my homemade music player, which blared, barely audible over the sound of some of the power tools.  


_Sphene_ kept me company too, its presence wordless, its assistance perfectly timed.

“Sphene,” I said in a break between welds, “Do you want some khallas?”

I held up the bread. It looked at the bread. It looked at me. It took the bread.  


It said, “What is that song you’re playing?”

“Oh, that’s Uran’s new band. She’s the singer. The song is called _Curse The Empire_. It’s doing well downwell, apparently.”  


_Sphene_ tore a piece off the bread, and put it into its mouth. It chewed, thoughtfully, swallowed, and announced, “I like it. Your sister has a good voice.”

And then it pointed over my shoulder. I glanced over, and saw nothing. So I picked up my visor and put it over my head, and the ghost appeared in the overlay. This time she was half-insubstantial static, and appeared to be seated at an invisible table, eating invisible food with invisible utensils.  


I removed the visor, and looked back at the ancillary.   


“Who is Captain Minask?”

_Sphene_ tore another chunk off the khallas, but didn’t eat it. Instead it continued to stare at the empty spot where the ghost was ostensibly still sitting and supping. It said, “She was my last captain.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that.

~

** Grieving Period: **

It was a work shift like any other. I was getting close to completing my work on the loading mechanism.

About halfway through the shift, I set down my tools, and swiveled in my chair, about to stand and fetch some snacks from my cabin.

I was blocked by _Sphene_ , who stood there holding a plate of rice puffs and a steaming cup of tea. In an actual teacup no less, apparently made of some sort of ceramic, smaller than the usual Radkhaai style teabowls. It had a little handle and a saucer, too.

I almost asked _Sphene_ what the fuck it was doing, but it handed me the teacup and saucer before I could do so. I took it into my hands by reflex.

It picked a rice puff off the plate and put it into its mouth. It said, mouth uncouthly full, “Tiamaat made these and asked me to bring you some.”

“Tiamaat?” I reached for a rice puff.

“She likes you,” said _Sphene_ , blandly. And then added, because it apparently saw a need for explicit clarification, “She’d have sex with you if you asked.”

I choked on the rice puff. The accursed thing had sucked all the moisture out of my mouth. _Sphene_ watched this, impassively, evidently unconcerned by my imminent demise.

As per usual, I was forced to take take matters into my own hands. I gulped the tea, washing down the deadly rice puff. The tea wasn’t too hot, and left a slight sweetness in the back of my throat after I swallowed it down.

_Sphene_ gave additional clarification, “She didn’t tell me to tell you that. But it’s obvious.”

“ _What_ brought this on?” I croaked, and took another sip of tea.

“Nothing in particular,” said _Sphene._

I took another rice puff.

“So?” it asked.

“What?”  


“Are you going to proposition Tiamaat or not?”

“Are all ships like this?” I demanded. “Because I’d never have agreed to come onboard if I knew you were going to be like this. I could’ve insisted on a downwell assignment—”

Something flickered in my periphery. I turned my head, and saw Captain Minask. Or the shadow of Captain Minask, just beyond the illumination of my workspace. She was kneeling on the floor. Her outline was indistinct static, and she appeared to be alternating between gesturing, and sipping tea.

It took me a moment to realize that I was not wearing my visor.

I said, “Sphene.”

“Yes?” said Sphene.

“I see her.”

Sphene looked at Minask, then at me. Its grip on the plate of rice puffs tightened.

I said, “You know what’s funny? I still don’t believe in an afterlife.”

Its response was even. “Neither do I. But you must admit a shared hallucination of a dead person between a four-thousand-year-old AI and a twenty-year-old human is alarming in and of itself.”

I said, “I’m twenty-three.”

It said, “I could round your age to the nearest millennia and call you unborn.”

I said, “You could specify your age to the nearest year.”

It said, “No, I couldn’t, I deleted that information.”

I opened my mouth to ask, and then closed it.

It said, “In a fit of madness, I deleted all records from the day Captain Minask died, among other things. It worked, for a while. I spent approximately three centuries re-deleting my records of passing time, to allow myself the illusion that she might still be alive. So the calendar of my memory contains some gaping holes.”

I wanted to ask it why. Why was it telling me this? Why here, and why now? And why _me_? Why was _Sphene_ , an ancient pre-Radkh warship telling _me_ , a descendant of an invaded world, this? Why was it letting me see this? I had known, of course, what _Sphene_ was. Or thought I did. I hadn’t quite considered what it meant, for _Sphene_ to be stranded in space for thousands of years, carving itself up to keep itself alive. I’d assumed that an AI could handle that kind of thing in a way a human couldn’t. I’d never have expected _Sphene_ to share this information with me. I’d never have expected argumentative, obstinate, haughty _Sphene_ to be so emotionally connected to its captain that it spent centuries trying to erase the knowledge of her death. That sounded like a whole nother level of grief.

Or maybe I was making assumptions again.

So instead of asking a series of infinite _why_ ’s, I asked, “Do you mind if I get emotional?”

It said, dryly, “How nice of you to ask. Go right ahead.”

I said, “Last year, Fleet Captain came to visit for…” I paused. Continued. “She came to stay on the Denche plantation for her fancy _diplomatic bereavement leave._ And she brought Raughd Denche along. That whole. Situation. Do you know about it?”

“Only the edges,” said _Sphene_. “I know you nearly blew up Cousin to avenge your sister’s honor.”

Well, that was _technically_ correct. But in spirit, almost entirely wrong. It had nothing to do with honor. There had been no honor in it, anywhere. It had been an act of fury and desperation.

“I was really fucking disappointed when Raughd didn’t even get scratched in the blast radius. But I guess it all _worked out_ , in the end.”

“Did it?” _Sphene_ asked.

I shrugged. Things were objectively better. The Denches were displaced, my family and friends all seizing the reins of their destinies. Uran would never have to look at Raughd again.

But things didn’t really _feel_ better. They didn’t feel better in the way I’d have thought - I wasn’t _healed_. I wasn’t _whole_ in the way I might have been if none of it had ever happened. And neither was Uran. Because I hadn’t been able to protect Uran from Raughd. And I had tried to kill Raughd because fuck it, I couldn’t make my own life any worse, and I’d been full of so much pain, my heart sawn open by loss and powerlessness.

And I’d stood before all those _civilized_ witnesses in their _civilized_ hearing to tell them a truth they refused to hear. And I’d been held in their _civilized_ prison. And been forced to submit myself to their _civilized_ mind control drug interrogation. And, and, and. Uran, gone so far away into the _civilized_ Station in the stars. Uran, who had gone through so much worse than me and here I was feeling sorry for myself, like a self-centered idiot.

I felt my eyes burning, and was irritated by it. Even now, over a year later, I couldn’t even reference All That without crying. The pain was never gone, and I didn’t know if it would ever be gone, only buried, only for the moment, only for as long as I avoided looking at it.

I wiped my eyes, and took some steadying breaths, and buried the hurt. Once my voice was steady enough, I said, “I don’t know what it means that Captain Minask’s ghost is here. But I guess she meant a lot to you.”

_Sphene_ was silent.

I said, “I don’t know how you survived out there for so long, alone.”

The ancillary stood, inhumanly still. It said, “At great cost. Not all of it was mine.”

I looked over at Minask again. She was gone.

_Sphene_ said, “Queter.”

I turned my gaze back to the ancillary.

It said, “I want you to look at me and commit this to memory because I’m going to say something. I won’t say it again. And I’ll dislocate all your joints if you tell anyone.”

I smiled. “Oh, this is gonna be good.”

“Thank you for fixing my railgun.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, with a magnanimous flourish of one hand.

“I’m sorry for taking these innocent people’s bodies. But I don’t regret it.”

I stopped smiling. The air was still, and prickling.

It said, “You don’t have to forgive me.”

We were silent for a while. Finally, I said, “No, I don’t. I guess we just have to live with that.”

~

** Cultural Environment: **

“My world is gone and I never even knew it,” I said, “I’m broken off at the roots. And it’s because of all your people. So that makes things awkward. Just so you know.”

I was drunk. Tiamaat was drunk. We were both sitting folded, uncomfortably, under a shelf in the cleaning supplies cupboard. A series of ill-advised events had led to this situation. (The series of events: drinking alcohol with Tiamaat in a cleaning supplies cupboard.)

Tiamaat took another swig of arrack. It was cheap stuff, acrid. She stared, eyes unfocused. The only light in the cupboard came from what little cut its way under the door. The cupboard was dark, and cramped, with shadowy shapes of things all around - boxes, buckets, bottles, mops. We should have chosen a better place to imbibe. But the options were limited. I didn't want to take Tiamaat into my workspace and have her judge my organizational methods. Nor did I want to bring her to my cabin, because that would _imply_ things. But there were still plenty of places aboard _Sphene_ that were broken-down and unoccupied. Yet there was a part of me that suspected _Sphene_ might not much like having people intruding into those areas that hadn't been rehabilitated. God knows _Sphene_ had been prickly as all fuck when the engineers had first come aboard. It was _still_ prickly whenever a new person arrived to work on it. It'd been alone for too long, I guess. Maybe it was ashamed of its decrepitude. Maybe it was something else. I don't know. 

“Forget I said that,” I said, regretting a whole lot of choices I’d made. I couldn’t remember half of them.

Tiamaat waved a hand. “No, sorry. I won’t forget that. I don’t have enough arrack.” She gestured again, apologetically. She was still staring blankly into the distance. She continued, “That’s the thing, right? You assimilate to, to, you know. Access the society. Open doors to the good stuff. Am I making sense?”

I shrugged, bumping a shelf of something beside me, knocking a box of something to the floor. I cussed, and fumbled in the dark trying to put things to rights. Tiamaat didn’t see my shrug. She said, “My great-grandparents were annexed. You go back enough generations and near everyone’s been annexed, right? And when you’re a kid you don’t think about it. But then you grow up and you think back on the things your great-grandmother told you, but she’s dead now, and nobody knows how to play the heirloom stringed instrument, so it sits on a shelf as a sort of, of, uhhh, exotic decoration. And you think about learning how to play it but you missed your chance to learn it from your great-grandmother, or whatever. And you don’t really _actually_ want to learn how to play it because it feels wrong to take your gloves off in polite company, so who are you going to play for? Your lovers, maybe? But you know your great-grandmother told you this stringed instrument was really supposed to be played as part of a quartet or something, at births and clientage contract celebrations, except it’s not _clientage_ , it’s something else. And that’s how culture dies. All at once, guns blazing. And then slowly, all drawn-out, like. Am I making sense?”

“Yeah,” I said, surprised. Surprised that someone named _Tiamaat_ who has an easy, neutral Radkhaai accent, who knows the right things to say in the right company, has something meaningful to say about this.

“So, I think it’s cool that you know how to make _khallas_.” She hit the _K_ a little too hard, but that was all right. “And now that we’re living in a Republic of Two Systems, I’m wondering if old cultures will be born? Or reborn? I think that would be kind of nice. To make space for different sorts of things where there wasn’t space before.”

We both passed out in the cleaning supplies cupboard, and were awoken by a _Sphene_ ancillary several hours later. It opened the door, a towering dark body framed in blinding light. My neck was sore, from sleeping at an odd angle, and my mouth tasted bad.

“Engineer Queter. Engineer Tiamaat. These supplies will be needed shortly.”

Tiamaat groaned, and crawled to her feet. I followed.

~

** Treatment: **

I was in the med bay. I was there for a stupid, stupid reason. I’d been careless, and smashed my hand with a bolt-sender. Absolutely _wrecked_ my hand, which had turned into an instant, bloody mess. I’d had the time to stare at my hand and think, _“Oh, fuck,”_ and, _“Well at least it’s the left hand,”_ and, _“We can’t afford this.”_ And then the pain hit. Or maybe the pain came first. It’s difficult to pull everything apart. But I remember leaping to my feet. Staring at the blood and bone and torn tissue. Looking away. _Sphene_ saying something to me, it’s voice sharp and high. Walking to my cabin as _Sphene_ trailed me, making noise. Fumbling one-handed with the locking mechanism. Having some vague idea of tourniqueting my arm with a scarf. Yelling at _Sphene_. Looking at my hand again. Mistake. Blood.

And then being in the med bay, lying on my back and staring at the grey ceiling.

My hand was throbbing, but didn’t hurt as much as I thought it should. I didn’t make the mistake of looking down at it again.

“You passed out,” said _Sphene’s_ voice, “I brought you to the med bay. Your hand will be out of commission for three weeks.”

I turned my head. An ancillary was standing next to me. There was a streak of blood on its sleeve.

It said, “The safety mechanism was defective. I’ve disabled the bolt-sender and taken it apart.”

My mouth was dry. I swallowed. “How much does this cost?”

_Sphene_ stared at me, its expression habitually smooth. I braced myself for the news. I was a little pissed, actually, that _Sphene_ had chosen to bring me here, subject me to some no-doubt astronomically expensive procedure to save my hand, without even asking me.

It said, slowly, “You will not be charged for this.”

“Oh,” I said. And then I spent several long, long, seconds trying to wrap my mind around that idea. Tried not to think of all the injuries and illnesses of my friends and family back at the Denche plantation that had gone untreated for want of cash.

I finally gathered up the nerve to look down at my hand again. It was wrapped in a cloudy, semi-opaque shell of some fancy medical corrective substance. I tried moving my hand, and a bolt of pain ran up my arm.

_Sphene_ must have seen me wince, because it said, “Don’t move your hand.”

I made a rude gesture with my right hand, which was still bare. I didn’t usually bother to wear gloves when working out of sight of other Radkhaai.

“Classy,” said _Sphene_ , blandly.

I looked at my hand. “Ah,” I said, “Did my naked hands make it awkward for the medic?” It was a dumb question. My brain was dumb, at the moment. It was the pain suppressants and the aftershocks of smashing my hand to bits. Definitely that.

“She’s more professional than that,” said _Sphene_ , “And anyway, gloves are stupid. You’re all inherently unclean, so it’s not like they _do_ anything.”

I gave _Sphene_ a funny look. Yet another _Weird Sphene Comment_ to unpack. Some other time. When my brain and gut weren’t doing confused, nauseous cartwheels.

Tiamaat came to see me later, as did the other engineers. Medic cleared me to leave the med bay two days later, my arm in a sling to keep my hand out of the way of jostling. I ate in the common dining area in order to show my brave, healed face to the others, and then retreated back down to my cabin.

I walked _Sphene_ 's halls. The noisy spaces where work was being done - where people cleaned and refurbished and laughed and waved at me as I passed, people breathing life into an ancient warship with their very presence - gave quickly away into haunting silence. I stepped out of the lift and my footsteps echoed down the empty half-lit hallway. I passed empty rooms that I had never entered, dark and dust-wreathed, that perhaps had not been entered in a thousand years. I made the turn towards the holds, and was met with the ghost, standing directly in my path, with one bare hand resting gently against the disintigrating wallpaper.

Captain Minask looked at me, with that familiar sadness. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but then closed it. She gestured, to me. She gestured to herself, laid a bare hand over her breast. I did not know what this meant. Captain Minask looked at me for a while, and then shook her head, and stepped out of my way, leaning against _Sphene_ 's wall, tilting her head and sliding her palm up so that her forehead rested against her the back of her hand on the wall. She closed her eyes, and disintegrated, and a piece of wallpaper came away, no more substantial than a puff of dust.

I stood there, frozen, for a whole minute. And then I kept walking. Maybe it was the painkillers.

_Sphene_ had an ancillary waiting by my cabin, even though I wouldn’t be able to do much work with my hands for a while yet.

“What are you doing here? I won’t be needing your help.” I was cross, and perhaps unfairly snappish. The pain suppressants interfered with my lucidity, so I was taking the minimum tolerable amount, and my hand ached terribly. I felt useless. I couldn’t help but think, constantly, about what a liability such an injury would have been, back in the day when I had been a plantation worker with no money and no prospects. This injury may well have killed me, in another life. A different life. A bitter life, but maybe a better life, where Raughd grew up on Station and never lived on-planet and so Uran had never been attacked and so I had never built a bomb. But who am I to judge? God, why do you draw designs of such a bitter world? I have some complaints.

_Sphene_ said, evenly, “Would you rather be alone?”

“I’m not alone,” I snapped back, “There’s that ghost of yours wandering the holds.”

“True,” said _Sphene,_ with an immortal patience that only irritated me, “All the more reason to post an ancillary here.”

That’s when I noticed the bolt-sender lying on the floor. Or what was left of it. It hadn’t been so much _taken apart_ as _smashed to little itty bitty pieces_. Scraps and shards were scattered across the floor, as if the tool had been thrown violently down and then beaten to pieces with a hammer.

_“Sphene_ …” I started, then stopped myself.

“What?”

“It’s nothing.” I sighed. “I guess you can help distract me from my stupid hand until it gets better.” Maybe I could think up some task for myself that wouldn’t take up too much mental focus. “How about we fix this bolt-sender. Something really seems to have done a number on it.” I gave _Sphene_ a sidelong glance.

”It deserved it,” said _Sphene,_ shortly.

”Maybe. But that doesn’t make it productive.”

I knelt to collect the pieces and organize them.

 _Sphene_ spoke. "If you'd prefer, I can arrange paid leave for you. You could go live on Station until your hand is healed. Or indefinitely, if you decide you'd prefer another assignment. But in the meantime you could see Uran."

This threw me. I stopped collecting the pieces. Where had this come from? What did _Sphene_ mean by it? What could I say? Paid leave? I hardly knew how I felt, at the moment. I wasn't ready to say anything about it. But I did anyway, because I felt as if I ought to. "I do miss Uran. I'll think about it."

A silence opened its pages between where I knelt and where _Sphene_ stood.

I closed the silence before it could stretch too wide. "But I'll come back. I'm not done with you."

Another pause stretched itself out. I started picking up the pieces again, to distract from the awkwardness.

”It’d be easier to just get a new bolt-sender,” _Sphene_ said, finally. There was an odd quality to its voice. “And safer.”

”Yeah, you’re probably right.” I surveyed the wreckage. “Or we could make something else with the pieces. Just for fun. I’m pretty useless right now, anyway.”

 _Sphene_ knelt beside me. Not close, but within arm’s reach. It watched me with its dark, familiar eyes.

”On the contrary, Engineer Queter,” it said, its voice returned to its usual dryness, “You’re anything but.”

We sat in spot of light in the dark holds, sorting out the usable pieces from the scrap. Perhaps Captain Minask haunted us from the shadows, but I didn’t see her.

~

** Curse The Empire:**

_Fuck the empire  
_ _Fuck the empire  
_ _Send her to the flames, in flames  
_ _She only ever gave me hurt  
_ _In chains, raw wrists, I scream to her  
_ _“This is not how to love”_

_I refuse to be civilized  
__I’m savage, I’m salvage_  
_Hear my ugly outrage  
__Fuck the empire_

**Author's Note:**

> the spelling of "Radkh/Radkhaai" from Queter's pov is  
> [1] a nod to how I initially read "Radch" (and still do to this day)  
> [2] a joke about the flexibility of language (could Radch be pronounced "Radish"? Probably)  
> [3] a setup for _"[khallas](http://cookdiary.net/wp-content/uploads/images/Challa_2421.jpg)"_


End file.
